Hold Your Fire
by WC Pemm
Summary: Wildfires must come and run their course, but take care not to scorch the earth too completely. One day you may want it again. [There Is A Season - Book III of IV]
1. PROLOGUE: DELL WAS MY FRIEND

**Book III of _There Is A Season._  
>Sequel to <em>Cryoablation.<em>**

* * *

><p>Dell Conagher died on April 12th, 1971.<p>

It was tragic, his neighbors said. Conagher was well-liked at his home in Bee Cave, Texas. Always had a kind word, always had a fix for any problem of a mechanical nature. Bit of a hermit, sure, but no one was without their quirks. All in all, a good man with a good head on his shoulders.

Or he had been, until the matter of the woman, anyway.

"Somethin' wrong with that one," James Bay told the pretty investigator with the long, dark hair. "Never saw too much of her, always wondered. Guess I don't even know her name. Heard she didn't act right. My girl, my Jesse, once she went over there to talk to Conagher about somethin' and it was that other one opened the door. Jesse said her face was all scarred over, real bad. Wouldn't talk to my girl."

From what the reporter could learn, the pair of them had only just returned from another of his trips, the ones that took them away for weeks on end. Hadn't even been there two days, hadn't even picked his dog up from the neighbor who would always watch it for him.

In the dead of night some kind of conflagration had started, and damned if it hadn't been a hot, dry winter even for Texas. Even the garage clear across the yard had caught fire. When the firemen finally arrived there wasn't anything else to be done but put the fire out before it spread to the cotton fields around it. No one had seen anyone get out.

When the investigator made inquiries to the coroner, he said it was too charred and melted to truly be sure, but what was left did match a man of Dell's description. What of the second person in the house, the scarred woman? The coroner did not know. Only one body had been found. The investigator was not allowed to see it.

When the obituary went up and the woman was noted nowhere at all, rumors began to fly. She'd tried to set Silas Roade's cotton to fire a year or so back, didn't she? And hadn't she been covered in old burns? A search was called, but the woman was nowhere to be found.

The funeral came, a few days later. There were fewer people than the investigator had been told to anticipate, mostly family members from out of town. According to one Adelaide Worthing, the truth was that ever since that woman had shown up a few years ago, Dell had been harder and harder to catch in a good temper. By the time the fire happened, everyone had more or less learned to stay away. Even so, it was a decent turnout. No one liked to speak ill of the dead. Words were spoken, tears were shed, the casket was lowered six feet into the ground, and buried, and then everyone went home.

And then, hours later—two or so in the morning—someone came back.

The investigator had pulled her hair back into a tight bun, and the black dress she had donned for the ceremony was replaced by thick jeans and a violet t-shirt dark enough that she was nearly lost in the dark trees when she stepped out of her car. Some twenty minutes later she had crossed the distance between the trees and the cemetery, unlocked the gate with something that certainly wasn't a key, and now walked slowly up and down the rows of headstones. She stepped lightly and carefully, shining a dim flashlight on each, until she found the one she was looking for.

DELL JACOB CONAGHER, the granite slab read. JULY 7TH, 1928 - APRIL 12TH, 1971. No epitaph. The earth before it lay uneven and soft. The investigator paused there, studying it for a whole fifteen seconds before unslinging the foldable shovel from her shoulder and digging it into the dirt.

Her speed was remarkable, especially for someone her size. It was only four-thirty when she heaved the last pile of dirt up over her shoulder and stopped to lean heavily on her shovel. Her back was killing her, and her hands were sore and threatening blisters through her gloves. She shut her eyes, heaved a noiseless sigh, and nearly jumped clear out of the grave when a voice said, "What are you doing?"

Before the shovel's handle even hit the dirt, she had whipped out her gun from the holster on her thigh and leveled it at the dark shape now leaning over the edge of the hold. "Whoa, shit," the shape said in a gravelly-soft voice, putting up its hands. "Miss Pauling, it's me."

Miss Pauling did not lower the gun. She did, though, squint up into the darkness, and in the same moment a tiny flame flickered to life in the grip of one of the raised hands. Between it and the moon, there was just enough light for Pauling to see the holder's face. It was half-twisted by old scars that were made worse by the dim lighting, and had high cheekbones and a flat sort of nose, and eyes that Pauling could only just make out as blue in the glow of the lighter. Five seconds passed, and at last Pauling pointed the gun at the ground. "Pyro?"

The lighter went out with a snap of metal. "Yeah," said Pyro—the mysterious Builder's League United Pyro, name and age unknown. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I could ask you the same thing. I thought you were in Arizona getting your house built."

Pyro twisted to look at something over her shoulder and made a soft, almost kissing sort of sound. A second later another dark shape loped up next to her, this one smaller and with perked, pointed ears. Pyro reached out to it, burying her hand in the dog's fur. "I was, it's built now. But Dell asked me to take care of his dog. I would have come sooner, but the guy at the place I was renting hated dogs." She ruffled its ears, and then peered down at Pauling again. "I saw you at the funeral so I followed you. Why are you digging up my teammate?"

Followed her. And Pauling hadn't even noticed? Sure, she was running on about three hours of sleep, but that was no excuse. Damn. "Ex-teammate," Pauling corrected. "And you're really not authorized to know that." She grabbed the shovel again and wedged the head under the lid of the coffin. "In fact, if the Administrator finds out you're even here … how did you find out about the funeral, anyway? We didn't tell any of the mercs."

"I couldn't get his dog and not find out."

"Were you with him before the fire?"

"What? No. I was in Arizona. We just went over this."

Pauling studied her silhouette in silence. "Alright," she said presently. "I didn't see you at the funeral, though."

"Yeah, well, everyone was apparently looking for me. I kind of had to make sure no one saw me, I don't want to get lynched for something I didn't do."

"Such as, say, burning his house down?"

For a few seconds, everything was quiet. Pauling could hear dozens of singing crickets. Then: "Yeah."

Pauling said nothing more, letting the implication hang in the air. The silence soured. "Dell was my friend," Pyro said at last, in a growling, crackling sort of way.

It took a moment, but Pauling nodded. Then she turned back to the coffin, saying, "Help me with this." After a moment's hesitation, Pyro slid down into the grave and did so. Together, they levered the lid up and off the coffin.

A sharp, unpleasant smell burst from the interior as soon as they'd cracked it a few inches, leaving Pyro hacking violently and Pauling covering her nose and mouth with a handkerchief pulled from her pocket. It was an acrid, chemical sort of smell, sour and vile.

As Pyro got her coughing under control, Pauling knelt and, propping the lid up with her shoulder, started fishing around inside. "Seriously, what the hell are you doing?" Pyro said in a raw voice. Her tone suggested she might be considering tackling Pauling if she didn't get an answer. "Does BLU always dig up its employees when they die or is this some kind of—"

"I really can't tell you, Pyro," Miss Pauling said firmly, and in the uncomfortable silence that followed, she let the coffin fall shut.

* * *

><p>By the time Pyro had helped her re-fill the grave, saying not a word the entire time, the sun had begun to rise, and Pauling was ready to drop. It was fine that the nature of most of her work necessitated that she do nearly everything on her own. She liked it that way, really. But the angry, burning ache in her back and arms and everywhere else made her glad Pyro had come along, suspicious as her appearance was.<p>

When Pyro offered her the use of her motel room for at least a shower and maybe a nap ("Seriously, you look like shit," Pyro observed) that gladness only increased. Pauling was no stranger to digging graves, but it was rare she had to dig further than two feet down.

"Though technically I'm supposed to be heading back to headquarters," Pauling sighed as Pyro and her new dog clambered into the passenger seat of her car. "But at this rate I think I'd fall asleep on the road if I did."

"Can you get us back into town …?"

"Well, you can't drive, can you?"

"Not as far as I know."

That settled it, and fortunately Pyro's motel was just a short jaunt from the graveyard anyway. It was nicer than Pauling had truthfully expected, even though the orange color scheme and stale cigarette smell left something to be desired. Pyro was lighting one as Pauling stepped into the bathroom.

First things first. Pauling turned on the shower, then fished out a small black machine that could have passed for a digital watch out of her pocket. She pressed three of its four buttons in a specific sequence and dropped back against the counter, exhaling. She caught her face in the mirror as she did: bags under her eyes, hair astray, cheeks stained with dirt and sweat. She grimaced. Such was the job.

The watch crackled. "Pauling," came a sharp, tinny voice.

"Administrator," Miss Pauling returned. "I'm in Bee Cave."

"Still. I know. Did you complete the mission?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. Any complications?"

"… One, possibly."

For a few seconds there was silence on the other end of the line. When the Administrator spoke again her tone was as crisp and brisk as ever. "All right. You can give me the details upon your return."

Thank God. Pauling didn't think she had it in her to give a coherent report right then and there. "Yes ma'am," she said again. "I've secured a motel room to get some sleep and then I'll be on my way back."

"Very well. You'll need to stop by Roswell before you return, that item on your dossier has turned up there. They'll be expecting you, so I suggest you bring a bigger gun than usual."

"Understood. Anything else?"

"Not at the moment. Thank you, Pauling."

The communicator went dead with a click and a low buzz.

* * *

><p>The shower may have taken Pauling longer than she strictly had to spare. There was something insidious about what hot water and steam on sore muscles did to one's perception of time. When she finally stumbled out of the bathroom, clean and wet-haired and still in her filthy clothes as she hadn't remembered to bring the extras in from the car, a whole fifteen minutes had passed. Not even close to efficient. Sleep wasn't efficient, either, but even TF Industries and Mann Co. together hadn't come up with a cure for that yet. Pyro pointed her at the bed as soon as she saw her, and there Pauling collapsed for the next three hours.<p>

The dog—Shep, Pyro had called him—woke her up. He had hauled himself up onto the tiny mattress next to her, stirring her into painful wakefulness, and turned in one tight circle before flopping down mostly on top of her.

Seventy pounds of anything coming down on her while prone wasn't a good idea. Even with Pyro's hoarse shouting and the dog's panicked yelp, it was only Pauling's own disorientation from being thrown awake that kept her from doing more than slamming the animal back down against the bed with her forearm pressed against its neck.

"—let him go holy shit, Miss Pauling he's fine, he doesn't bite—" Pyro was there, suddenly, wide-eyed and bodily shoving Pauling away. Her wits finally gathering themselves, Pauling let her. The dog scrambled off, toward Pyro, body low and ears down. "Christ, he wasn't going to hurt you!"

For a few seconds Pauling stared mutely at both of them before things snapped into focus. She was going to need to work on how long this took her. "Oh—God, I'm sorry. Is he okay? I'm not around animals much, he startled me."

"No, really?" Pyro mumbled, carefully keeping the dog's head still and looking him over. He was still giving Pauling a whale-eyed stare, but seemed fine otherwise. "I think he's alright. I don't know. I don't know anything about dogs," she added, scratching him behind the ear. "Shit."

"Sorry," Pauling said again, drawing some hair behind her ear and looking around for her glasses. Ah, there, on the bedside table. "What time is it?" she said as she put them on, blinking a few times.

"Around ten, I guess."

"Damn it. I slept too long." Pauling said, forcing down a yawn and stretching. Pyro paid her no mind as she did, still bent over the dog and with a pensive sort of expression buried under her scars. It was the first time Pauling had taken a good look at her since she had shown up in the cemetery. She was wearing a sort of grungy-looking blue turtleneck with the hems of the sleeves singed, and nondescript jeans with nondescript boots. The boots might have very well been the same she wore on the field. Stray fur from the dog covered her. It was even in her hair, which was shorter and more neatly cropped than it had been when Pauling last spoke to her, just after BLU had lost the Coldfront mission. Honestly, Pauling wasn't sure she would ever get used to seeing Pyro wearing anything other than her flame-retardant suit—or for that matter, acting her age. She looked up when Pauling cleared her throat. "Thanks for letting me use your bed."

"Um—no problem. Are you taking off?"

"I've got to, I'm afraid. Errands."

"Errands like digging up more bodies?"

"Burying them, more likely," Pauling said. Pausing, she tapped her lips with a finger in thought. A bigger gun than usual, the Administrator had said. It certainly couldn't hurt. Well—probably couldn't. "Actually, I could use your help."

Pyro looked at her uncertainly. "Help burying bodies?"

"Oh, no. Well. Maybe. But I don't anticipate having to do much burying on this one, it's just a retrieval. You've done those, right?"

"Just once, but yeah."

"Great. I could use the help in case things go south."

"What about Shep?"

"He can come, too."

That settled things. In less than an hour they had cleared out, the dog and Pyro's single suitcase both sitting in the back seat as Pauling pulled onto the highway. They talked idly as the mile markers ticked by. As it turned out Pyro had as many bizarre and interesting things to say as the rest of the mercs, and Pauling found she enjoyed her company. She was a completely different creature from the silent, uncomfortable woman Pauling had driven from Dell Conagher's homestead with almost three years ago. Pyro liked radio theater and had an obscene number of opinions on different varieties of candy, and with surprising animation told Pauling about the time a turkey had gotten itself on the roof of the rental she had been staying at while her house was under construction.

"It got stuck in the chimney somehow," Pyro said with a grin, "God, I don't even know how it got out, but the next day I go into the living room and there's just this huge tom turkey standing there staring at me."

"What happened?"

"Well, it was between me and the garage where I was keeping my weapons. All I had in reach was this frying pan, and then it started chasing me…"

A lull in the conversation came, eventually. For a little while the only sound was the hum of the air conditioning and Shep panting in the back. Then, Pyro said, "Hey, uh. Am I in trouble?" Pauling glanced over at her. "For following you. You said if the Administrator found out…"

Pauling regarded her for a few seconds before giving her a smile. "No, I don't think so," she said, turning back to the road. "It all worked out in the end. You've got no reason to worry, I think."

None yet, anyway.


	2. ACT 1: SEPTEMBER

"Isaac was my friend!" he cried, he begged them in his fear  
>But centuries of hatred have ears that cannot hear<br>An eye for an eye was all that filled their minds  
>And another eye for another eye, 'til everyone is blind<p>

— Tommy Sands, "There Were Roses."


	3. 1: RIGHT, ALICE?

**SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1971**

**"SAWMILL" BASE, COLORADO**

**NEAR MANNWORKS QUICKLIME FACTORY**

Everyone was gone. Just gone. But the mission wasn't over yet.

That was the conclusion Pyro kept coming back to. It couldn't be over, she reasoned. Someone kept killing her.

Just a few seconds ago she had respawned. She wasn't sure how many times that made, and she still had no idea what—who—had been killing her. She gulped down air to fight off the immediate nausea and leaned against the wall to try and ground herself. She kept dying. Someone had to be here. She needed to find her team.

Pyro slung her flamethrower over her shoulder and headed out into the pouring rain yet again.

This time she made her way carefully around the very borders of the field, moving slowly and jumping at every sound. The rain was getting to her. It was hard enough to hear herself think sometimes as it was, and with the fat drops pounding her mask incessantly it was almost impossible. Still, Pyro kept moving. She would never figure out what was happening if she kept dying, or had another meltdown over a little rain.

By the time she reached the cavern beneath the waterfall, her thoughts had skipped, record-like. The noise from the crashing water didn't help. Now she was thinking about her team again. Maybe RED had taken everyone but her hostage. Maybe the fighting had simply moved underground, where the intelligence was hidden. There had to be a reason, she told herself, and touched the axe hanging from her belt to assure herself it was still there.

She kept telling herself that as she reached RED's territory. She found no one there, either. Her head hurt from all the rain, from the waterfall. She only stayed within view of their base for a few seconds before darting out of sight and and making for the flooded intelligence room. No need to tempt fate.

Against all rationality she had hoped to hear the beep of a sentry guarding RED's intel. That would at least be life. Instead she only got the muted drip of water echoing in the mildewed basement, where there was sign of neither friend nor foe. Pyro stopped and stared for a few seconds at the empty safe that once held the intel, then turned and trudged back up the stairs. She cringed as the rain threw a sheet of rain into her mask when she stepped out of the alcove.

The rain. It always fucking rained at Sawmill. Her headache was getting worse, and the water was blurring up her mask bad enough that it was getting hard to see. The light hit the wet glass in a way that threw rainbows across her vision. She shivered, and turned to head toward the point. She hadn't been there yet. Maybe she'd missed something obvious.

(She only made it halfway there before she gave in and hauled back on her flamethrower as she walked, ammo be damned. She stared down into the fire, made huge and rich with color by her lenses. Her headache did not improve, and a dizziness came over her, but after she'd used up nearly half her ammo she could feel her heart rate start to come down.)

Up the hill, up the stairs. Her feet dragged with each step. Everything felt fuzzy, and a roaring sound was filling her ears. The waterfall again, maybe. Her boots clomped hollowly on the barn that held the field's capture point, and she looked up.

_Beep … beep … beep …_

Her heart lurched, then skipped in shock. There at the edge of the point, slouched against the sentry and studying a beer in his gloved right hand, someone stood guard. She could not see his face, but she did not need to. Thank God. Oh, thank God. "Dell!" Pyro called out, dashing for the sentry nest.

A moment later, blood sprayed the floor, thick and hot. It was bright and fresh and new, a lurid crimson that stood out like a flame against the layers of drying, sticky brown that coated the wooden planks beneath it.

* * *

><p>Sniper lowered the detached rifle scope from his eye, frowning. "Pyro's doin' it again."<p>

"Doin' what?"

"Ran into the bloody sawblade. Fifth time in a row." He shook his head. "Just straight into it."

Beside him, leaning heavy on the guard rail ringing the water tower's reservoir and rolling his smoldering cigarette between his fingers, Scout snorted. "Gimme that, I wanna see." Sniper did not bother trying to stop him when Scout snatched the scope out of his hand.

Peering through it, it took him a few seconds to zero in on Sawmill's central barn, its southern entrance just visible from where they sat. They could see for miles from the water tower, probably over all the land Mann Co.'s Colorado division owned, though most of it was nothing but thick clumps of aspens and pines interspersed with green, rocky cliffs. Here and there it was interrupted by bare patches, where the base's logging front had once operated. The lip of the tower extended far enough that it protected the catwalk that wrapped around it, mostly, enough that it was a decent place to sit when it rained, and even better when it didn't, like today. It was Sniper's favorite off-hours haunt for this reason, and Scout liked to follow because Sniper always let him bum as many cigarettes as he wanted.

Where was the damn base? Oh, there. A tiny, crumpled blue figure lay leaking red some feet from where one of the massive spinning sawblades whirred steadily away. If he squinted Scout could see older, drying blood all around it.

Scout smiled.

Well. It wasn't really a smile. It nearly looked like one and felt practically identical, but he'd been doing it enough over the last seven months to tell the difference. He wasn't sure what it was, but it only came out around Pyro, and only when he found her in pieces from an explosion or struggling to stand after minigun fire had shredded her legs. It never reached his eyes.

It was easiest to just call it a smile.

"Nice," he said, handing the scope back to Sniper. Sniper took it and made no comment. "Looks good on her. Hey, when's that meetin' we got with Miss Pauling an' them anyway?"

"Soon enough," Sniper said, looking at his watch. "Probably ought to get goin', I s'pose. Guess I'll see if I can't grab Pyro before she offs herself again."

"Nah, I'll get her."

Sniper glanced over at him. He didn't turn his head and nothing on his face changed—that was Sniper for you, for the most part—but Scout could feel the unspoken question. _What are you going to do?_

But he did not say it. Instead, he said, "You an' her seem like you're … managin', yeah?"

Scout got to his feet and flicked his cigarette over the edge of the tower, watching it fall.

"'Course we are."

* * *

><p>Everyone was gone.<p>

Everyone was gone—but. When Pyro stumbled out of respawn, breathing hard and shaking a little, someone was waiting for her. Had it been anyone else—but the sight of the teammate leaning against the divider directly across from the respawn room only threaded her veins with a familiar, sickly combination of dread and irritability. "Scout," she said flatly, stopping in her tracks.

"Oh hey, y'recognized me this time," he said. Pyro rolled her eyes. "What the hell you doin' out here, we ain't done a Sawmill job since February."

"Where's everyone else?" she countered, pulling off her mask and strapping it to her upper arm. Scout's face screwed up as she did, per the norm. Good. "I can't find anyone. The intel isn't in the intel room—" Wait. "… You're the one who's been fucking killing me, aren't you? _Again?_"

"Holy shit, you are freakin' useless." Scout pushed off the divider and closed the distance between them in two strides. For a moment they just stared at each other. Without warning his hand jerked up, snapping his fingers right in her ear, once, twice, three times. It was loud enough to hurt, and while she was jerking away in pain he leaned into her face and spoke much more loudly than things warranted. "Hel-_lo_ in there, reality to moron, yo, can ya hear me over in Pyroland? We don't do intel jobs no more, remember, we don't do intel, we don't do caps, we don't do payloads." He shoved her shoulder. "Idiot."

Pyro's lip curled in a snarl. The words leapt up her throat, the words to tell him to stop fucking with her already, of course they did intel and payloads—

Something in her brain shifted, quiet and subtle. The snarl faded. The words died. Pyro blinked, and looked away.

"Oh," she muttered. "Right. Yeah. Now we fight robots."

_Robots_. The word was still foreign and absurd on her tongue. Sometimes Miss Pauling used words like "machines" and "automatons" instead, and Pyro could only assume it was because the word "robots" was too ridiculous for her, too. It was still hard to believe, and she'd already nearly died fighting them once.

Yes, she remembered now.

That meant she'd just spent God only knew how long running around an abandoned base, panicking over nothing. The team was never here to begin with. The best part was this wasn't even the first time. She'd done this once at Steel, too—wandering onto an empty base and getting caught in a loop.

Scout had to have been the one killing her. Fucking bastard. He'd take any excuse. She'd lost track of how many times he'd turned on her, even in the middle of real missions. She was starting to think he'd killed her more times than all of RED ever had combined.

But there was nothing to be done right now. She took a slow, steady breath. "Our last Sawmill job was in March," she said, turning away and heading down the stairs, toward the exit. "Get your facts straight."

"Oh yeah that is _real_ rich comin' from you," Scout said behind her, following. "_I_ got my facts straight, _I_ don't go runnin' around empty bases lookin' for people what ain't there, and _I_ ain't crazy."

"You just stalk me and kill me over and over instead."

"Why would I waste my time?" he sneered. "You kill yourself enough on your own anyway. An' our last Sawmill job was in _February._ Ask frickin' anybody."

Pyro only grunted in answer. "Yeah, that's what I thought," Scout added, locking his hands behind his head and swaggering up alongside her as she left the base and made for the path that would take her back to Mannworks. At least the rain had begun to peter off as they were talking. That was something. "You can't remember shit anyway."

"For fuck's sake. What do you want?"

"I came to get your stupid ass, duh. We got that meeting with Miss Pauling and RED, official introductions post-merge an' shit, or didja forget that too?"

She had. "So you got my stupid ass, why don't you get lost. I can walk by myself."

Scout's tone was ugly and scornful. "You sure 'bout that? 'Cuz I think you might just go get lost in the woods instead. Find you burnin' up deer again, havin' tea parties with hares, right, Alice? You know _Alice in Wonderland_, yeah?" The rain was picking up again. Fast. "Oh wait I forgot, you can't even _read_—"

Her flamethrower hit the ground. Pyro ripped the axe out of her belt and swung at him. There was too much weight behind it, too much anger and frustration. He leapt away easy as breathing, his laugh caustic and pounding, like the rain had been. This was exactly what he was trying to get her to do anyway, probably what he'd been doing all morning. She was an idiot for taking the bait. Bracing herself, she waited for him to retaliate.

The attack never came. He was grinning. He had this grin that never reached his eyes, one with too many teeth and with nothing pleasant in it anywhere. Scout shoved his hands in his pockets and eased a few steps backwards, wearing that grin like the mask it was. "You are way too freakin' sensitive, Bambi. Screw this, I ain't babysittin' the team idiot, I'm out. Seeya."

He turned on his heel, toward the base—the real base at Mannworks, not the abandoned Sawmill. Pyro watched him spring off across the dry, brittle grass, her hands still wrapped around the axe and the rain still pounding in her ears.


	4. 2: JUST PYRO

Mannworks Quicklime Factory. The last time they'd been here (in _March_) Pyro hadn't paid any attention to the white building with its smokestacks and smog. Or she had, but only enough to realize that it had the symbols she had learned to recognize as "Mann Co." on its front. The only thing she had known about Mann Co. then was that they supplied BLU, that they were the ones that left the crates at the bases. The lone time Pyro had opened one of those, she had found a giant raven's skull and a huge hock of ham. She had taken both, but it hadn't answered any questions about their associate company.

Now Pyro was looking up at those same looming smokestacks as she drew near, still with no idea what she'd been doing in Sawmill. She had absolutely no business there anymore, not with RED and BLU dissolved and reformed under the selfsame Mann Co. When she finally set foot onto the concrete front of Mannworks, she had given it up for lost, and was trying to ignore the sick sense of foreboding in her gut. Scout was right. She couldn't remember anything, and it seemed to only be getting worse.

Fortunately she did not get long to dwell on it. As she stepped inside and stopped to shake off the rain, a familiar voice split the quiet. "HELLO, PYRO!"

"Hey, guys," she said, looking over her shoulder to see Soldier marching down the hallway toward her with Spy in tow. Soldier saluted; Spy nodded in answer. "What's up?"

"We are going to the meeting!" Soldier said, grabbing Spy by the shoulder and giving him a shake as he grinned at Pyro from under his helmet. "It is an important meeting! Miss Pauling is going to be there, you know."

"I know."

"Ah-hah, but did you _also_ know that the RED team is going to be there?" Soldier let go of Spy (who brushed off his shoulder with a faint sigh) and made as if to choke the air in front of him. "I am going to throttle _every single one of them_—"

"No you are not," Spy said, adjusting his tie. "Unless they prove to actually be robots in disguise. Again."

"That is what happened last time!"

"Yes, but ideally it will not happen _this_ time." Spy checked his watch as Pyro slung her flamethrower up over her shoulder. "I witnessed the RED spy harrying our Scout again, so I am reasonably confident we are meeting with the genuine article. I trust you'll be along shortly, Pyro?"

She nodded, jerking her thumb down the hall where they had come. "I'm gonna put my stuff away first, but yeah."

"Very good. Will you wear your mask, I wonder? I have yet to see RED's pyro without theirs." He smiled a little, raising an eyebrow. "We cannot give up all our secrets."

Pyro's eyes fell to her mask, still strapped to her arm. She hadn't even thought about it. "I don't know," she said at last. "Maybe."

They departed after that, and Pyro picked her way through the unfamiliar halls of the factory until she found the storage room they had all left their weapons in upon arrival last night. She propped her flamethrower in the corner and lay the axe down beside it, and took a minute to try and scrub the rain out of her hair. To her surprise, it had already dried out. Damn rain. At least there had to be a lot more of it to make her panic, these days—the drizzles were a discomfort at worst. Didn't make places like Sawmill's pond much better, but it was nice to feel like she was improving.

Running her fingers through her hair one last time, Pyro finally unbuckled the mask from around her arm. The rubber gleamed faintly in the storage room's poor light, staring up at her with its tinted lenses the same as it ever had. She'd walked back to the base with it off, but if she had remembered any of the REDs could be wandering around upon her return that probably would have changed. None of them, except maybe their spy, had seen her without it yet. She was as much an enigma to them as the RED pyro was to BLU. She was even still in her work suit, which she didn't remember having changed into.

Regardless, things changed. And Scout always seemed a little less inclined to harass her with the mask off. She left it hanging on her flamethrower's nozzle, and trotted off to find the meeting.

* * *

><p>Chatter echoed off the high, empty concert walls of the cafeteria as Pyro pushed open the door. Peering in, she saw the collection of lunch tables clustered together at the far end of the room, nearest where the kitchen once was. Mannworks had a conference room, but it had long been empty of chairs, and anyway half of RED had claimed that as their sleeping quarters upon their arrival.<p>

As she made her way over, she could see the results of the two teams meeting on peaceful ground for the first time. Both sides were more or less still wearing their team colors. Both BLU's Scout and RED's were in each other's faces, talking loud and fast as if to see who was the better loudmouth. The other mercs were peacocking against their mirrors, too, albeit with less squawking and more suspicious glaring. The only exceptions were the still-masked RED pyro, who was seated next to the RED scout and gave off the distinct impression of being terribly entertained, and the RED engineer, who had his feet kicked up onto the table and his hardhat over his eyes.

This was going to be weird.

Pyro slid into the last open seat, next to her Heavy. He gave her a brief nod in greeting and she returned it before glancing around the tables—sure enough, a few of the REDs had broken off to watch her. It was more than a little uncomfortable, and she wasn't sure what to do.

Fortunately it was then that Miss Pauling, sitting at the very end of the table with an alarmingly large mess of files and folders in front of her, tucked her pen behind her ear and cleared her throat. The whole table fell silent immediately, eyes trained on her.

"All right," Pauling started, looking around. "This shouldn't be too long. This meeting is mostly to tell you not to kill each other anymore." (Both soldiers booed, and loudly. They went ignored.) "You're all working for Mann Co. now, not RED or BLU, though the Administrator and I will still be involved. We're not asking anyone to be friends, just that you afford each other the same respect you'd give to your old team."

Funny joke, Pyro thought, risking a glance at Scout. He was still sneering at his BLU counterpart.

Pauling glanced down at her files again. She shuffled through them a moment, and then paused. "Oh, and the old 'no names' policy has been dissolved. So if anyone wants to go by something other than their job title, you're free to do so now."

That got the tables going again, murmurs and mutters in full force.

Pyro shifted uncomfortably.

"Well," came a drawling, scratchy voice. Everything went silent again, all eyes drawn to one corner. "Seein' as how I'm the only engineer, I'll just stay that way," the RED engineer said. He hadn't even pulled his hardhat up over his eyes. Pyro chewed the inside of her lip.

He wasn't Dell. She didn't want to call him that.

A more reassuring voice piped up next. "Me name's Tavish," Demoman said. "Tavish DeGroot, out o' the best damn demolitions clan that ever came outta Scotland." He looked the RED demoman dead in the eye as he said it, for he too only had one. All he got in answer was a loud, rude noise. The rest of RED broke into chuckles.

"Man! Nah, nah, you got nothin' on our guy," the RED scout piped up, adjusting the brim of his hat. "Maybe you could pass out quicker'n him, though, I dunno. I'm Clarence and I'm gonna kick every damn robot ass out there, an' I'm gonna do it quicker than your scout." He dragged some of his syllables out differently than Scout, his "R"s more pronounced and the accent nearer the throat than the nose. Still something from out of New England, though Pyro couldn't have placed where.

"Aw, screw off, loudmouth," said Scout. "I seen your swing an' it's shit, you couldn't freakin' break a window with them skinny arms." Clarence stuck his tongue out at him.

Pyro looked back and forth between them. She had never bothered to try and look closely at any of the REDs' faces, given her mask and the fact that when they were that close someone was about to die. Next to one another, the scouts were strangely similar—same nose, same cheekbones. All she could really pick out was that Clarence looked just a little bit younger, with longer hair, and he got dimples when he grinned. Glancing around, it dawned on her that the same held true of all the other mercs. The differences were there, but hard to find unless you were looking.

Once this dawned on her, Pyro found she could not stop stealing glances at the RED pyro and engineer. Did the engineer look like Dell? Did the pyro look like her?

Her second question, at least, was answered soon enough. Once Clarence had leaned back into his seat, smirking insufferably, the other pyro reached up and started wrestling with their mask. Pyro did not catch the way several of her own teammates looked her way as the RED pulled the rubber mask off.

The first thing she noticed about the RED pyro was his—her? Pyro couldn't tell—their smile. It was sincere, almost gentle thing, and went well with their brown eyes. No scars marred their skin, at least none that Pyro could see. They pulled their glove off one hand (coppery skin, just barely freckled, just scarcely lighter than Pyro's) through their hair (dark, almost auburn, ear-length), dropped the mask into their lap, and waved. "Call me Red," they said pleasantly. They had the same gravel to their voice that Pyro heard every time she spoke.

Dimly, Pyro wondered if that was anything like what she used to look like.

She was shaken from it when Clarence whapped his teammate lightly on the shoulder. "'_Red_'? Are you serious? You ain't serious. I ain't callin' you Red."

"I'm completely serious!" Red said, laughing. "Unless they want to be Blue, and I'll just be Pyro.

"Um," Pyro said, and dammit all now everyone was looking at her. "That's—that's okay."

"See," Red said, whapping Clarence right back. "Or you can tell us yours anyway, hon, up to you. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious."

Pyro felt like a deer caught in headlights. "I," she said. "I'd, no, I'm just Pyro. Just Pyro."

Red studied her for a few seconds. Then they smiled again, and nodded, and turned their attention back to the rest of the team. The ex-BLUs' gazes lingered on her a moment longer, but then Sniper was introducing himself as Mr. Mundy, and they all looked away again.

Except Scout.

Scout was still looking at her.

Pyro pretended not to notice.

* * *

><p>All in all about half of the newly-assembled team had given names, though Pyro doubted she would remember to call her teammates by theirs. (Tavish? Mundy? Really?) The initial tensions between everyone seemed to have quieted, mostly. Even the Soldiers (both of whom refused to be called anything but Soldier) had quit subtly trying to break one another's necks.<p>

The REDs seemed nice enough, Pyro thought, enough that she didn't feel worried about working with them. It was more than a little jarring when she caught Clarence smiling in her direction, though. Even with the red shirt, he looked too much like Scout for comfort. He even wore something on a chain around his neck, but it disappeared beneath his shirt and she couldn't tell if it was dog tags or not.

There wasn't much left to the rest of the meeting after that. Miss Pauling ran over a few more policies that had been relaxed, none of which Pyro had even been aware existed, and told them that their intel indicated their first proper fight with the robots was likely to happen within the next twenty-four hours. Until then, they were free to do as they liked. "So that's about it," Miss Pauling finished, collecting her files. "And I'll be around, there's some things around here I've got to take care of. Just shout if you need me."

"Yeah?" Scout said, brightening immediately. "Well hey y'know if, if you got any free time—"

"I don't," Pauling said briskly. "That's all, boys, thank you. Dismissed."

Scout visibly drooped. He bounced back immediately, he always did when Pauling shot him down, but Pyro had seen it and it was hard to not get any satisfaction out of it. It wasn't a very mature reaction, but neither was his decision to make it his job to make her life hell. She knew why he'd done it, and to a point she even understood it, but that didn't mean she would take it lying down. She had already given him that once.

Rising with the rest, Pyro stretched good and hard, suppressing a yawn she wasn't expecting. The Sawmill nonsense must have taken its toll on her. Milling through respawn more than once or twice in an hour always wore her out. In the corner of her eye she kept watching Scout. Smug son of a bitch.

Next to her, Heavy was on his feet, too. "Hey," Pyro said, dropping her arms to her sides, "when was the last time we were here? Around Sawmill, I mean."

"Mmm," Heavy said. "Some months ago. March, I think. It is good to be back again, out of the Badlands."

March. Pyro smiled. "Yeah, no kidding."

"Last time you had trouble with the saws, yes?"

The smile faded. "The saws?"

Heavy spun one of his fingers in the air. "Near point, the saws. You ran into them sometimes—always trying to lure RED into them, I think." The look on her face must have given him pause. "I am not surprised if you do not remember. They killed you at once, cut straight through. Very quick. Respawn does not let you keep that," he said, tapping his temple. "Thank goodness."

"No, I think I remember you guys telling me about it now." Pyro shook herself. Just respawn amnesia. Okay. "I wouldn't remember, I guess."

In ones and twos around them, the team began to disperse. Heavy made for the door, and Pyro accompanied him halfway before stopping and turning back to the tables. Scout was coming toward her. When she put herself in front of him. He narrowed his eyes, but stopped. For a few seconds they stared at one another. Then: "The hell do you want, creep?"

By then only Miss Pauling was left in the cafeteria, having spread her files out again to shuffle through them. She didn't seem to be paying them any attention, but by now Pyro knew better—it was almost impossible to elude Pauling if she had decided to keep an eye on you. It made confronting Scout a bit less dangerous, at least. "I asked Heavy," Pyro began. "Our last Sawmill job was in March. So I guess so much for you having your facts straight."

Scout gave her a flat, blank look. "What?"

"What you said earlier."

"I didn't say nothin' about that, when did I say that."

"Yes you did, we were on the stairs at the Sawmill base—"

"Sawmill?" He squinted at her. "What the hell would either'a us be doin' over there? We ain't had a Sawmill job since March, yeah, so what, what're you talkin' about?"

Pyro hesitated. "You came and got me for the meeting…"

The utter disdain and contempt on Scout's face silenced her. "Yeah okay and why the hell would I come get _you_ for anything?"

Why would he? He was right. Why would he, and why would she be at Sawmill? Pyro swallowed, hard. "But…"

"Whatever, you're makin' shit up again, you're hallucinatin' shit again, it's all you know how t'do anyway, I don't care." No, not again, not again, she hadn't hallucinated it, she hadn't—"And another thing," Scout started, shoving her shoulder with the flat of his hand. "What's this 'just Pyro' shit, you think just 'cuz you don't tell no one your name you ain't the same murderin' bitch? You ain't foolin' nobody, idiot, I know your damn name an' if you think I'm gonna forget it you can—"

"You _what?_"

"Don't friggin' interrupt, I said I—" And Scout cut himself off, instantly, his glower morphing into a studious look with deeply furrowed eyebrows. Try as she might, Pyro could not choke down the sudden shock that had leapt up the instant she had processed what Scout had said. "… I said I know your name."

"The—the hell you do." He was screwing with her. He was absolutely screwing with her. "No one knows my name. Nobody."

Not even her.

Scout sneered at her. "Yeah? Well I got news for ya, _firebug_,"—Pyro winced at the nickname, she always did no matter how many times Scout pulled it on her—"I hadta listen to _somebody_ comin' home every night for weeks yakkin' on about you and now I got that name branded on my friggin' brain, so you just—"

"Can I interrupt?"

Miss Pauling was there, standing almost between them with her clipboard under her arm. Pyro had not even noticed her arrival. Scout shut up instantly. For an awkward stretch of time, no one said anything. Pauling glanced between them, and said at last, "Scout, I was hoping to speak with you privately?"

Now it was Scout's turn to look blindsided. And then, with a kind of slow, dawning hope: "Oh—oh yeah?"

"Yes. You don't mind, Pyro, do you?"

"….N, no. No. Uh, I'll—I'll just go."

"Thanks," Pauling said with a smile. It was hard to read her smiles. "See you later."

"Yeah," Pyro mumbled, shoving her thumbs in her belt and making for the door.


	5. 3: OH SHIT

What time was it?

The question occurred to Pyro only after she had made her way up to the second floor of the factory, into one of the emptied offices where she and some of the other BLUs had dropped their bedrolls upon arrival. She hadn't seen a clock since they'd arrived, and had no idea how much time had passed between waking up that morning and returning to Mannworks from Sawmill.

She was pretty sure she had really been out to Sawmill, she thought. Scout was the only variable. But she couldn't remember how she'd gotten to Sawmill. Her memory had her waking up, pulling on her suit more out of habit than necessity, saying good morning to Sniper, and … then Sawmill.

Now she sank down onto her unrolled sleeping bag with a quiet groan, pushing the heels of her hands up against her eyes. She had gone so long without any time-skips, too. The last one had been nearly a month ago. Or she thought, at least. Who knew, really?

She stayed there for was was probably not as long as it felt like, eventually sinking down enough to rest her forehead on her knees. She was still like that when she heard the footsteps in the hall, but they weren't enough to get her to stir. Neither was the light knock on the door, or the creak of the hinges as it opened. The voice that came after managed to rouse her, though. "Hey, uh, uh—Pyro? BLU Pyro? Yo, you alive?"

The voice was just familiar enough to be startling, and she lifted her head up to see the RED scout leaning on the door handle, watching her with quirked eyebrows. "Uh," she started, "hey." What was his name? Shit. She'd already forgotten. "What, uh—what's up?"

"Aw nothin', just where my crap got dumped sucks. It don't got any windows. But I guess you BLU guys took this room, huh." The RED scout chewed his lip, frowning. "It don't gotta be big, y'know. Just I don't wanna get stuck in a closet. You know anywhere that's still free? An' don't smell weird?"

This was surreal. Pyro would have thought the RED team would have been slower on warming up to them, at least. "I'm not sure. I haven't been up past this floor."

"You wanna help us look?"

"Us?"

"That's me," someone else said, and Red poked their head into the room. "Our team's a bunch of loud assholes that snore. We're trying to find somewhere quieter."

And that was how Pyro found herself in the company of the two REDs, wandering around the upper floors of Mannworks. It was slow going, between her companions lightly bickering about room preferences, and she would have felt more like the odd man out had Red not seemed genuinely interested in talking to her. "We had a bet going," they confessed early on. "After the merger, on what you'd look like under it. You're different than I'd imagined."

"Different how?"

"Red thought you'd be a frickin' Adonis," the scout said—Clarence, Red had called them once or twice so Pyro hadn't had to ask, thank goodness. "Just out an' out gorgeous, I'm talkin' marble statues here, Greek, all'a that. Fantastizin'! That's what it was," he added, smacking Red's shoulder.

Red rolled their eyes. "Yeah, and you thought she'd—it is 'she', right? Yeah?—you thought she'd be a dinosaur."

"It woulda been cool!"

Pyro snorted. "Sorry to disappoint."

"Aw, it's all fine," Clarence said. He poked his head into another room, made a face, and left it again. "I'm wonderin', though, did your team know? 'Cause Py—Red here didn't take theirs off fer like the first six months neither on account'a them bein' too good for us." Huh. Theirs. Maybe Clarence couldn't tell if Red was a man or a woman either.

Red protested, saying they were just shy. Pyro shrugged and said, "I was sort of the same way," and tapped her left cheek, the bad one all eaten by the scars that clawed up into her hairline and twisted her mouth ever so slightly, and made it just a little harder to blink her left eye. She had spent a lot of time studying herself in the mirror, since Coldfront. She had nearly forgotten what she looked like. The scars were a good excuse, anyway, and they were almost the truth.

"Oh," Clarence said, "yeah, okay." Red just nodded.

The three of them climbed another flight, as every door on the third floor was locked or led somewhere inhospitable. Here they came out of the stairwell into a long, broad hall. "Heck, we could just sleep on the floor," Clarence said.

"No, I want some privacy," Red said, frowning.

"The whole dang floor's empty, that's private!"

"Whatever, what's in these rooms?" They trotted ahead, and Clarence tailed them. Pyro followed for lack of any better alternative. The first door Red tried opened, swinging creakily in to reveal what was neither an office nor storage. Peering in over the RED mercs' shoulders, Pyro could make out a familiar sight: chalk-white walls studded with maps and black screens. Complicated-looking consoles lined the room, and in the center a round table stood empty. A few chairs were scattered around it, some upright, some overturned. "Oh," Red said, "it's an intel room."

"Was this a base?" Pyro said, following them a few steps inside. "I thought it was just a factory."

"Maybe it's only a meeting room," Red mused, moving to the single small window that overlooked the factory yard. Clarence made a short lap around the room, peering down at the machines, all of which seemed to be deactivated.

After a few seconds of watching the two of them, she turned and meandered further down the hall. The next two doors only opened into more storage closets, stuffed with crates and cleaning supplies, but the fourth was locked. The handle seemed loose in its socket, though. Pyro jerked it hard to one side and heard something crack, and the door swung open.

When she looked inside, at first Pyro thought it was just another empty meeting room. It had the same consoles and maps and a matching table with chairs, and she had been in so many of these rooms so many times that at first she didn't register anything unusual about it. For a few seconds she stood in the threshold, just looking around, when something beeped very softly. Her eyes cut to one of the consoles against the far wall, and the gently-flashing red light. That was the difference; this one still had some life to it.

Pyro slipped inside, curious now. This one felt less abandoned than the other had, too, and when her foot hit something soft she figured out why. It was a bedroll, neatly tied up. Someone was sleeping here. They must have had the same idea as the REDs. There was not much else of interest: a small bag of what was probably clothes, a blanket, a pair of shoes, all lined up in an orderly row.

Something white on the table caught her eye. Drawing near, she realized it was a trio of folders, stuffed with paper. Someone from Mannworks must have left them here, before it was evacuated. She glanced them over before scanning the rest of the table. A small box of shotgun ammunition lay next to them; without thinking, she pocketed it.

Idly, she flipped the topmost folder open. A blurry mess of black type stared up at her, by now a familiar sight. Seven months and she had yet to find anything that made it easier to focus on the letters. She huffed, blowing hair out of her eyes, and turned a few more pages. Blur, blur, blur. This was a bad day for reading, apparently, usually she could at least pick a few words out. Today there was nothing, and she was going to get a headache soon if she kept trying to force it.

She was about to close it all again and leave, but the last page she turned to was different from the rest. It had photos. Badly photocopied photos, but photos, and suddenly Pyro was interested again. Squinting, she tried to pick them out in the poor lighting. They all seemed to be of people, mostly from a distance. She couldn't make out the person's face. It barely even looked like a face. The eyes were strange; one was a too-big white circle, the other lost in shadow, both above what almost looked like a snout. In one the subject seemed to be carrying something long and bulky-looking, halfway lost except for a fat blob of white against its holder's stark black top. It looked like it was made up of pipes and tubes, and the one end she could make out in the photograph terminated in a fat nozzle with evenly-spaced holes above a smaller pipe.

… Wait.

The peace of the room was broken as Pyro tore through the rest of the folder, looking for more pictures. There were only a few, but they were enough: one figure, over and over, in a black hooded sweatshirt. Carrying a long-necked machine. Wearing a gas mask with one shattered lens.

A queasy sort of feeling had settled in her stomach, though upon examining it she was not sure why. Pauling herself, right from the start, had told her BLU had been tracking her long before she had any idea they existed. But still, photos? She couldn't remember ever seeing anyone taking photos of her. And so many, and in different places—in one she was standing by a wrought-iron statue of a pair of dogs and a boy that she could remember fairly clearly as being in somewhere in Idaho, and another showed her near a huge structure she could only identify by the enormous pair of hockey sticks above the entrance. The stadium from Texas, the one she'd burned down.

Was this entire folder on her? And if it was, what was it doing in the top floor of an abandoned factory?

She shuffled through it again, trying and failing to find her own name. Class. Title. Whatever. But even on her best days she could only recognize the word Pyro about half the time, and the folder gave up none of its secrets. With a low mutter, she shoved it aside and opened the second one. It was much the same: page after impenetrable page. This one had only one photograph, and try as she might she could divine nothing from it: a long shot of a squat, dark little building, dotted with crates and machinery. Two figures near the building were discernible, but barely, their details lost in the poor copies.

She reached for the third folder.

Behind her, the door creaked open.

Pyro turned. Her eye fell on the bedroll as she did, and when she looked up to see Miss Pauling in the doorway with her eyebrows in the air, it occurred to her that she really was spectacularly stupid sometimes.

* * *

><p>"Oh shit," someone said. Clarence, that was who it was. He and Red were standing just behind Pauling, looking in over her shoulders. He said it in the quiet, half-whispered way that comes with watching someone else completely screw up. Breaking into your manager's locked room and looking at her probably-top-secret folders sounded like a complete screw-up.<p>

"Miss Pauling," Pyro said weakly, scrambling for an excuse. I didn't know. The handle was broken. I went temporarily insane. The last one made her wince.

Pauling studied her, saying nothing. Her brow was knit, her face sort of drawn in, more than a little suspicious. She glanced over her shoulder at the other mercenaries. "Red, would you please check her?"

"Honored." Pyro blinked as Red slipped into the room, but kept still when they grabbed her gloved wrist and held it up. From their ammo pouch Red pulled out a small silver thing, a Zippo, and with a flick of their wrist lit it and held the flame directly beneath Pyro's palm. The warmth seeped through the glove, growing almost uncomfortable when Red kept it there a full five seconds. But then they dropped her arm and stepped back, pocketing the lighter. "No disguise, she's real."

"Thank you," Pauling said. "If you two would go on back downstairs, then, please?"

"Yes ma'am."

"A'ight."

Pauling watched them go down the hall, and Pyro heard the door to the stairwell swing shut a few seconds later. Then she turned back to Pyro. "Well," Pauling said, sighing, "I don't think I need to tell you this looks bad." She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. "Care to explain yourself?"

"I had no idea," Pyro blurted, putting her hands up. "The lock broke when I tried the handle and I was curious. I was up here with those two, I was just looking around. I didn't realize. Seriously."

No response. Pauling was just watching her, quietly. Soon her gaze flicked to the open folders. "Did you read those?"

"No, I—" Don't lie, do not lie to Miss Pauling— "—I looked at them. But I didn't read them. I can't. Uh, read them. Remember?"

"… Can't," echoed Pauling, exhaling. "Right. I'd forgotten. Still," and Pyro got out of her way as she crossed to the table, "not good, Pyro."

"I know. I know." She watched as Pauling closed the folders and stacked them neatly atop one another, sliding them out of Pyro's reach. "Um. I guess I can't ask why there's pictures of me in there."

"I'm a little surprised you recognized yourself, honestly." Funny joke. She would have known Shark anywhere. "No. But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt this time," Pauling said. "If only because I remember the time Scout left that note about you up on the noticeboard for a week and you never figured out what it said."

Oh, that. Right. Pyro felt her face screw up at little at the memory. That note. The note Soldier had spent a full hour chewing Scout out over when he noticed it. That one. "Okay. Thanks."

The files secured again, Pauling gestured for her to follow. Pyro let herself be led back into the hall. "I wanted to talk to you about Scout, actually," Pauling said as she closed the door behind her. It swung open again as soon as she did. "… hmm. I'm going to have to fix that."

"Sorry," Pyro said. "Uh. What about Scout?"

"Is he behaving himself?" Miss Pauling asked, leaning against the doorframe and reaching up to adjust her crooked glasses. "You looked like you needed rescuing after the meeting today. I hope you didn't mind."

Pyro shrugged. "It's … fine. Nothing I don't expect."

"There's a lot of things you could expect of Scout, about you. That doesn't mean he should be getting away with some of them. He's an adult, and your teammate. You deserve basic respect."

You know Alice in Wonderland, yeah? Oh wait, I forgot.

Pyro's teeth snapped together.

No, no. She wasn't even sure if he had really said that. He couldn't have if he hadn't really been at Sawmill.

God …

"It's fine," Pyro repeated. Then, before Pauling could press further: "Did you know about, uh, what happened? Before you hired me?"

Pauling pulled a face. "No, not exactly. We … knew one of Scout's brothers died in a fire, and that you came out of somewhere in New England before your fires started cropping up, but we never linked the two. There wasn't a reason to. The first time we noticed youwas when you blew up that bookstore in Wyoming. Do you, ah. Do you remember that…?"

Did she remember? Did she hell. "… Oh. Uh. No." She couldn't remember anything.

Pauling sort of smiled at her. Pauling smiled at things like that, things that Pyro wasn't sure people were really supposed to smile about, like Pauling wasn't always entirely sure what to do with her face either. It made Pyro feel a little better about her own awkward smiles, anyway. "It was a pretty big deal, you could look it up sometime." No she couldn't. "Took out half a city block. You stuck around there long enough for us to figure out you did it, but you got out again so quickly it took us weeks to catch up with you again. And it took us a hell of a lot longer to herd you somewhere where we could keep an eye on you. We were as surprised as everyone else when the story came out."

"I—wait, herd me?"

Pauling's smile got a little bigger. "You didn't meet Engineer by chance, you know."


	6. 4: ATTAGIRL

In typical BLU fashion, Pauling refused to say more on the matter. Had said too much already, she said, almost sheepishly. Pyro followed her down the stairs anyway, to the second floor, and got a "Keep your nose clean," and a serious look before Pauling trotted off down the halls.

Ugh. Pyro shook herself, trying to process all of what had just happened. She'd been herded—how? Did that explain the hunted feeling that colored all the memories she still had of that year?

… Had Dell known? Was he in on it, in on getting her to join BLU? He couldn't have been, could he?

God. She was suddenly so tired. With a huge sigh she turned around and headed in the direction she was pretty sure her room was in.

She'd barely made it halfway there when a voice distracted her. "Hey, she's still alive! Hey, Blue!"

Pyro turned. There was Clarence, with Red once again in tow. He waved, jogging up. Red took their time. "Oh, man, we figured you was about done for, goin' into Miss Pauling's room like that."

"It was an accident," Pyro said, trying to disguise the note of irritation in her voice. Probably failing, too, but at least she'd tried. "I'm probably the shittiest excuse for a spy you could ever get, anyway."

"Isn't that what a spy would say?" Red said with a grin as they arrived behind Clarence. "Don't worry about it, sweetheart, we believe you. Anyway we need all we can get against these tin folk. We were hard-pressed enough last time."

"Hey yeah what happened with that?" Clarence said, glancing between the two of them. "I wasn't there none, Miss Pauling'd had me off doing some stuff away from the team and they all bailed without me."

"A BLU'd know the story better than me," Red said as they looked at Pyro, eyebrows quirking, and it dawned on her that they were waiting for her to tell it."

"Uh," Pyro started, fumbling. "It was … messy. We'd already got the merger news, so we were expecting to be moved soon. Then we got a phone call saying we were supposed to meet up with you guys in this warehouse a few miles away."

* * *

><p><strong>AUGUST 17TH, 1971<br>****BADLANDS, NEW MEXICO**

"Why are we meeting them here?" Pyro said, and no on answered. It probably had something to do with the fact she'd not bothered to open her mask to say it. With Dell gone, she didn't have a particularly reliable translator anymore, unless you counted Soldier. (Pyro did not count Soldier.)

Well. If she waited long enough, someone would probably ask the same question. Something about this place made her want to keep her mask on entirely: the abandoned Imperial Mining warehouse was hardly the most welcoming place she'd ever been.

Sure enough: "Why're we meeting that lot in the bloody basement?" Sniper said presently. His hand, Pyro noticed, had not strayed far from the kukri slung in his belt ever since their arrival. They'd been told no weapons, but there had been an unspoken agreement of "hell no" to that. "Seems like a damn good place for an ambush."

"And what good would that do them?" Spy countered, in that tone of voice that said he was going to prove Sniper wrong. "We have already received official information that this is a legitimate merger. The RED mercenaries have no reason to fight us if they are no longer being paid to do so."

Sniper grunted. If anything else was to be said it was silenced when Scout pointed out the yellow glow down one branch of the otherwise mostly-dark hallway. This led to a small, dirty-looking room, lined with cement walls and lit only by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Pyro felt the hair on the back of her neck go up as they filed inside. The room reminded her of the basement in Upward, or of her own house in Arizona as it was in the middle of being built. The construction team hadn't been able to finish it right away, and once Pyro had gone down there with a flashlight just to look around. It had all been cement and wooden beams and darkness, and she got so claustrophobic that even after the basement had been finished she couldn't bring herself to go down there for a month.

This room was like that, the sense of claustrophobia made worse by the crowd of her teammates, and the crowd of strangers on the other side. Nine of them to their eight. They were half-wreathed in shadow, a few sitting stiffly at the low table, the rest standing. None of them moved. As they entered, the seated RED spy came to attention. "Hello," he said.

"Hello yourself," Demoman said, and to Pyro he sounded unimpressed. The spy smiled. "This's a damned joke of a place for introductions. You louts got somethin' against windows?"

None of the REDs spoke. They were all focused utterly on Demoman now, though. Pyro checked that her axe was at hand. She saw no weapons on their ex-enemies, but that meant very little.

When the RED spy opened his mouth again, Pyro would have sworn there was something wrong with his voice. It was clipped, and there was a weird cadence to each word. This was a shitty time for her to start hallucinating again. "Of course not. So good of you to join us. Won't you have a seat?"

"I fear we will not," Spy answered. Almost as one, the REDs shifted their gazes to him. "Where is the esteemed Miss Pauling? I do not imagine our employer would have us meet without some sort of intermediary no matter how neutral the ground."

"She will be along shortly. Delays."

"I see," Spy said. "In that case I do not think you will begrudge us returning aboveground to wait for her arrival."

If the RED's face changed, Pyro didn't see it. Instead her eye had fallen on Sniper—she was trying to place the way he was looking at the RED closest to him, their scout. Sniper was perfectly still, all his attention as pinpointed as one of his rifle beads. She figured it out a split second before everything happened: he looked the way her dog did just before he started chasing a rabbit.

Sniper lunged. There was a hideous crunch as he grabbed the RED scout by the neck and slammed him against the cement wall. The instant he did a loud droning noise like a motor filled the air. His kukri flashed in the dim light and ripped through the scout from sternum to pelvis in a single fluid movement. None of the wet, fleshy sounds Pyro had come to associate with disembowelment resulted. There was only the earsplitting screech of metal on metal, and that ear-grinding engine whine.

The scout flickered. Pyro made the mistake of blinking. When she opened her eyes again the scout was no longer anything even remotely human. Now it was a thing with metal skin and iron joints and long skinny limbs roped with heavy tubes and wires, covered in bolts and seams, and it was staring at Sniper with five burning yellow eyes. It made a hissing, crackling sound, swiping at him, but Sniper threw it to the ground and leapt away.

As one, the remaining REDs lurched forward with a terrible series of clangs, seeming to blur and smear as they moved. Pyro only had time to draw her axe before the one that used to be the RED engineer had her by the collar. With a panicked swing the axe bit deep into the side of its head. The thing's grip tightened. "Guys!"

Heavy shouldered into it hard enough to shake it off of her. Pyro barely managed to pull her axe back out of it before Medic grabbed her arm and hauled her backwards. As he did she could see Soldier grappling with one, screaming, and Scout furiously beating away at another that had him by the arm. He broke his bat over the thing's head, making it teeter, and kicked it hard enough to send it to the ground. He yelped in surprise when Medic grabbed him, too, pulling all three of them out into the hallway.

"What the hell, lemme go—"

"Medic, shit, what're you—"

"Shut up, both of you," Medic barked, and in the same moment Demoman howled something. Immediately the rest of the team piled back out into the hall, Demo slamming the door shut behind him.

For two seconds, nothing. Then: an earsplitting boom. Something slammed into the door, dust exploding upward from beneath it.

Silence.

When her ears stopped ringing, all Pyro could hear was her teammates' labored breathing. Finally, Sniper spoke. "None of 'em were breathin'. Was I the only one noticed?"

"No," Spy said, no trace of superiority in his tone this time. "I noticed. I did not know what it meant, and so I felt discretion should be exercised."

"It meant they were bloody robots, obviously," Sniper snapped, "clear as day. I don't expect the rest of 'em to know a hologram when they see one, not with Engineer gone, but you've been to Australia. You've got no excuse. I told you this was a trap."

Spy looked as though he were about to make a rebuttal when Heavy spoke. "Either way, we must not stay here. We return to the van, and report to Miss Pauling and to Administrator. Sniper, you will tell us as we go. Come." He left no room for argument, turning and going up the hall."

They moved hurriedly, listening as Sniper explained. "Not that I know why there's any of the damned things here," he said carefully, "but I've seen ones done up like that back home, a lot like that. Holograms over metal bodies. Not near so advanced as those were, actually, the disguise on that scout held up 'til I gutted him."

"The spy spoke to us," Heavy said. "The voice was right. Is this also—"

"Wait you're freakin' tellin' us that was real live robots back there?" Scout burst in as they reached the stairs. "Real actual mechanical men, what, like in the movies?"

"I don't know why I keep bein' surprised you lot are a hundred years behind Australia," Sniper said. By now they had reached the top of the stairs, and were making their way down the short hallway that would take them back into the warehouse's front room. "But yes. I don't know how they got it to sound like that damn spy, though—"

Sniper was at the head of them when they turned the corner. He was cut off as a bullet whizzed through the brim of his hat, hitting the wall and sending the hat flying, and that was when all hell broke loose.

Later Pyro's memory of the skirmish would just be a series of panicky blurs. She had no idea how they hadn't heard them first, because the sheer noise of the thirty or more robots blocking the doors in front of them was deafening. Someone shouted for them to run back downstairs, and someone said no, it was a dead end, and then the robots opened fire. Soldier grabbed her arm and then they were careening forward.

Between her tinted lenses and their speed she only had impressions of what was going on. Heavy had grabbed a robot that ventured too close and ripped it apart, using its leg as a flail to clear their path out of the stairwell. Bullets and a few times what Pyro thought was a laser zinged by them. One caught Medic in the shoulder, and another ripped through the baggy underarm of her own suit.

There was no means of getting to the outside. Everywhere she looked Pyro could only see metal and glowing lights, and it seemed like for every robot they ripped apart two more took its place, swarming in from the side hallways and dropping out of ceiling tiles. Pyro hacked the head off of one with her axe only to have another try and pull it from her hands on the backswing. It got a flare gun to the face, and she kicked its legs out from under it in time to hear Medic shout. "This way! The stairs! Up, up!"

This time she was the one who grabbed Soldier, hauling him off by the collar from where he was screaming directly into a robot's severed head. The two of them were the last to reach the stairs, tearing up after the rest. As they caught up and slammed the stairwell door behind them, Sniper was talking. "—why would I know how to stop the damn things, killin' em seems to be doin' just fine! You want robotics lessons, you should've asked Truckie when you had the chance—"

"—didja see that one I was beatin' on back there, shit, damn! It had knifes for fingers, man, didn't have nothin' on me though, and—hey," Scout said, pausing, "where's Spy?"

They all stopped, looking around. Spy was indeed gone. "I didn't see him," Pyro said, pulling off her mask. Not to Scout, just to the team in general. In turn, Scout acted like he hadn't heard her. That was how they did things. It was easier that way. "Never mind. So what do we do?"

A pounding on the door silenced everyone. Demoman cursed, Heavy tightened his grip on the robot leg he still held, and Soldier turned smartly on his heel. "ALL RIGHT!" he bellowed. "Heavy, this door opens inward. Barricade it! Guard it with your very life! Do not allow the enemy inside! Scout and Medic, you're the fastest, go and check all the rooms for anything we can use to tear these jokers new assholes."

"Or anywhere we can get out," Demoman added.

Soldier scowled at him, but did not object. "Sniper, Pyro, find the most defensible room in case we need to fall back. Demo, what've you got left for ammo?"

"Jus' enough for the one trap."

"Very well. Stay here, we'll set that up around the door as a failsafe." Soldier pushed his helmet up and glared around at the team. "And if any of you see Spy report straight to me. I'll hamstring the French coward. MOVE OUT!"

Everyone jumped to action. In a few minutes Pyro and Sniper had found a room with a sort of narrow half-turn by the door, a decent chokepoint, and had started piling up chairs and overturning desks to form a wall. Scout and Medic turned up almost empty-handed. "This was all we found of use," Medic said, waving two brooms as they stepped into the faux foxhole. "And a fire extinguisher, but I gave that to Demoman. I believe out of all of us he would be able to make the most use of it."

"Right," Sniper said grimly. "It'll have to do, then. We're not defenseless, anyway, far as I saw near everybody's got something to bash heads in with at least. Let's get those desks across the hall in here."

There were few enough things to be retrieved by then that Pyro found herself standing idle while the other three got to work. Instead she went to go and check on the door, and found a veritable wealth of cement blocks piled atop a metal desk shoved up against it. All around the doorframe Demo's familiar stickybombs hung in waiting—it occurred to Pyro they might very well take part of the building down. The gravel war bases had a mysterious way of surviving day-in and day-out explosions and gunfire, but in her limited experience, civilian buildings tended to fare less spectacularly. She said as much, pulling off her mask, and Demo nodded, adjusting the fire extinguisher he had tucked under one arm. "Aye, like as not. Wish I'd thought to blow up the stairs as we were goin' up 'em, that'd get us more time."

Heavy had opened his mouth to speak when something shook the door hugely, a shock so powerful it sent one of the cement bricks tumbling down to the floor. It missed Pyro's foot by inches. She looked up from it to find a chunk of the door had blown inwards toward them, splintering wood falling onto the desk. A mechanical hum and a clanking filled the air, coupled with the piercing sound of metal scraping metal as whatever it was that had struck the door slowly withdrew. An instant later it exploded forward again, knocking another chunk of the door in and throwing the desk forward. Pyro caught a glimpse of what she would have sworn was a gigantic hand through the gap.

Demo shouted for them to get clear, and as the other three tore out of the way he followed, backwards, detonator in hand. Just before she turned the corner into the barricaded room, Pyro looked over her shoulder. In the same moment a deafening crash rocked the air. All at once the desk before the door was thrown aside, the cement blocks with it, and two massive hands gripped the doorway. Something huge and round and all silvery metal shouldered its way through the crumbling drywall. In the space past it, she could see more of the other machines.

Then Demo planted his feet, roared a warcry at the thing as it straightened up to its full height—easily twice the size of any of them, even Heavy—and hit the detonator.

The whole floor shook. Pyro's vision was flooded with light and the sound was so much that she staggered away from it. She regained herself just in time to see the titan struggling to stand amid falling plaster and dust. The blue lights on its chest flickered erratically, More robots were swarming through the path it had opened. Pyro cursed and scrambled into the barricade, Demo hot on her tail. He slammed the door shut behind them, and as soon as they were out of the chokepoint Sniper and Scout pushed yet another desk into the narrow gap between the door and the wall. Just in time: the door burst open six inches mere heartbeats after they did, stopped only by the desk. Metal limbs tried to push their way through, groping and fumbling to no avail. "Not too organized, are they?" Sniper said in a breathless gasp. "All the better."

"Yeah sure but what d'we do now?" Scout said, watching the growing mass through the gap. "We just sit here 'til we die or what? I mean—"

He was cut off by his own shout as a hail of gunfire came through the gap. Without another word he legged it behind the wall of desks and dropped, silent. Then: "Goddamn, what're we freakin' doin'?"

Silence, punctuated only by the scraps and hums and clangs of the machines. Then Pyro said, "Maybe Spy went for help."

"Maybe Spy went for help," Scout parroted, voice high and derisive. "Yeah right, ran off to save his own stupid neck more like, turncoat damn—"

Soldier cuffed him on the ear. "Spy is dead!" he declared as Scout winced and muttered a stream of curses under his breath. "Or as good as until proven otherwise! We have more important things to consider! Like how to kill every single one of those fatherless metal bastards!"

"Or how to escape," Medic said, sounding bored. "There are windows that open in here, you know."

Indeed there were: a trio of sturdy-looking rectangular windows bled the early afternoon light into the room. They were large enough that Pyro though at least she and probably Scout and Sniper could get through with ease, but the others would be a question, and she could not even begin to think of how Heavy could fit his shoulders through. "Is there a fire escape under them?" she asked."

"This is a Mann Co. building, of course there isn't," Medic answered. "I was astonished that there was a fire extinguisher."

Demoman snorted. "Aye, a three-story drop into some bushes, there's a soft landing! Snap our necks, too! No," he said, brandishing the selfsame fire extinguisher. "We're going to have to make a stand." Soldier cheered. "What've we got for offense?"

Weapons were produced: an axe, a flare gun, half a baseball bat, kukri, pistol, and shovel; the fire extinguisher; the two brooms; Heavy's robot leg-flail. A tense silence overcame them as they looked down at the meager pile, broken only by the constant scrape and clang of the machines at the door. It wouldn't hold forever. A while, perhaps, but not forever. Sniper pointed at the extinguisher. "Would that do anythin' against machines? Blind 'em?"

"Might," Demo said. "Wish Engie were here, he'd know." Despite herself, Pyro glanced over at Scout, just in time to see him roll his eyes. Typical. "Best shot we have for an escape, though, I think. Give 'em a damn great eyeful of foam an' make for the stairs, try to get out. They don't seem at all coordinated."

"What if that big one's still there?" Pyro said. "It was bigger than Heavy, it broke the whole door down."

Demo shook his head. "We're goin' to have to risk it. An' I think it's goin' to have to be you that leads."

"Wait, why me?"

Demo gestured to the mask, hanging on her arm where she'd strapped it. "You ever been caught in the face with extinguishin' powder? Outright blinds you, and we're goin' to have to get right in among them with it. You an' that mask got the best chance of breaking through.

Pyro looked down at her mask for a few seconds, then heaved a sigh that might have been just slightly exaggerated. "Alright," she said, unbuckling it and starting to pull it back onto her head. "I wanted to get a closer look at them anyway. Death by robots is a pretty cool way to go."

"Attagirl," Soldier said, beaming.

* * *

><p>Once she got a look at it, Pyro realized she had another unexpected advantage with the fire extinguisher: it was the exact same brand and model that she kept for emergencies at home. It had taken her a good month of arguing with herself to convince herself to buy it—the thought of putting fires out was something that could actually pitch her straight into a bad mood if she wasn't careful—but when she awoke in a cold sweat after a particularly vivid nightmare, one filled with smoke and flame and fireworks, she went and bought one the next day.<p>

It had been good timing, too. The week after, Shep went tearing off after a quail, and in the upset knocked over one of the bins Pyro had been burning trash in. The fire had spread across a quarter of her yard before she remembered the extinguisher. In the end she hadn't even needed to call the fire department.

Perhaps her luck would hold twice.

While they had been talking, the robots had gone curiously silent. When Pyro and Heavy, who had volunteered to accompany her as immediate backup, peered around the corner, the door still hung open. The machines, however, were nowhere in sight. "Obvious trap," Heavy said, frowning, "but we do not have much choice, eh?"

Pyro shook her head, and checked her grip on the fire extinguisher. There were bright spots on it where the dust had been wiped away. She hoped to God it still worked. If it did, and everything went as planned, they would break through to the stairwell and fight their way down the stairs, at least to the second floor where a jump onto the hard desert dirt would be less deadly.

If everything didn't go as planned, well, they'd worry about that when they got to it.

Heavy pulled the desk away from the wall, and Pyro took point, forcing herself to move cautiously. It was a damn difficult thing to remember respawn was not a constant fallback. But as they stepped into the hall, there was not a single robot to be found. All Pyro could see was the remains of the doorway that Demo had bombed, and the huge, hulking gray thing lying still in the crumbling threshold.

Before, Pyro had wondered if she imagined its size. She had not. She wasn't sure how it had possibly fit through the doorway, even breaking it. Each of its arms was easily the size of Heavy's chest, and its hands so broad and engulfing it could have easily picked up any of them. From the angle it was difficult to be sure, but it did not seem to have any kind of head. Instead she could make out a raised half-circle atop its shoulders, studded with flat black ovals that she supposed functioned as its eyes. Its casing was scorched and dented now, and she could see exposed wiring in its riveted back. "Is it dead?" she said aloud, trusting Heavy to get her meaning.

"This also may be a trap," he answered, but he began edging forward anyway with the pistol at the ready. Pyro followed, ready to set off the extinguisher should there be an ambush. None came as they drew closer to the fallen machine. It was silent—the grinding engine hum of the others was gone. A few feet away from the robot, Heavy stopped and kicked a piece of exploded plaster at it. It bounced off the casing with a tiny burst of dust, ricocheting away. The robot did not move. "They are not so sturdy as they look, perhaps," Heavy said, glancing over at Pyro, but he did not lower the gun. "All right. Clear," he called back to the barricade.

Soldier instantly popped his head out of the doorway, scowling as he (appeared to) peer around the hall. Satisfied, he stepped briskly into the hall, shovel at the ready. The rest of the team followed. Soon enough they had gathered around the fallen robot. Pyro had knelt to look at it better. Robotics wasn't something she could even begin to guess at, it was something she had always relegated to Australia and sci-fi novels, but she was interested all the same. If Dell had been here—

But Dell was, if circumstances and Miss Pauling were to be believed, dead.

Footsteps. Pyro looked up to see the team moving on, toward the stairwell. "Don't see nothin'," Scout said as he squinted down into it. "Can't hear nothin' neither. Couple'a dead ones on the stairs. Lights ain't on no more, Demo blew the damn lights. Think they can see in the dark?"

"Like as not," Sniper said as Pyro got to her feet. "We goin' down, then?"

"What else're we going to do?" Demoman said, and that decided it.

Pyro once again took the lead, extinguisher at hand. An ambush not only seemed likely but obvious, like Heavy had said. Why would the machines withdraw when they had them cornered? If they had another robot like that dead one at the top of the stairs it could have punched through the wall like it had the door.

She couldn't think of an answer as they descended into the dark. By some miracle, they reached the second floor without incident, but the silence from before had been replaced by that motorized hum. It was distant—on the first floor, it seemed—and Pyro stopped at the door that opened into the second floor to look back questioningly at the team. Soldier was immediately behind her. "In here?"

"Can check for weaponry," Soldier said. "But keep your guard up."

Carefully, Pyro shouldered the door open. It was dark, enough that with her mask Pyro was nearly blind. Pausing in the doorway, she reached into her belt pouch and grabbed one of the three Zippo lighters sitting in it. With a snap of her wrist, there was light.

Now, looking around, she could see the silhouettes of strange shapes—not robots, thank God, but they did seem to be machines. They were short and fat, mostly round vats plastered with warning labels. If she tried she could pick out words like STOP and NO, but whatever else they said was lost on her. Everything was perfectly silent besides the distant hum and the breathing of her teammates. Directly ahead, she could see a blinking green light maybe ten yards away.

She moved forward, the team following her and her lighter. No one spoke, listening to their footsteps bounce off the walls. With no other particularly sensible recourse, Pyro headed for the green light.

It turned out to be mounted just above a door, set in a narrowing hallway she had not been able to make out from the stairwell. Passing the lighter to Soldier, she tried the handle. It turned with a soft click. Overhead, a light flickered on. It needn't have bothered. A large window stood directly opposite the door, just ten feet away.

Nothing else in the room was of interest, now, and it just looked like office supplies anyway. She heard the team's relieved realizations as they all piled in, and as the head of the pack, she reached the window first. It looked like it opened, and when she tugged on the bottom of it, it did. Thank God, she thought as she looked down.

At least twenty robots, standing rank and file directly below the window, looked back up at her.

She slammed it shut and jerked away from the wall just as gunfire pelted the cement around it. Turning, she ripped off her mask. "They're outside."

The whole team fell silent. "How many?" Heavy asked.

"Not a lot, but—I mean, we'd have to go down one at a time. There's too many for just one of us. And they've got guns."

"And got our location now, then," Sniper said. "Right, let's fall back. Look for some other windows—"

He was interrupted by an ear-piercing alarm screaming through the building. Pyro clapped her hands over her ears, eyes screwing up in pain. When she opened them again the team was already tearing out the door. Pulling her mask back on, she followed.

Blindly they stumbled through the dark second floor. The green light flashing above their door had turned red, and Pyro saw more of the same as she tailed the rest around corner after corner, marking each door. It was jarring and disorienting, and Pyro misjudged her position and clipped walls and door frames over and over from it.

Every door they tried was locked, and it wasn't long before that motorized whine reached their ears again, coupled with clanking footsteps moving in lockstep. They scrambled down another of the labyrinthine halls, and Pyro smacked straight into Demo's back as he skidded to a halt. Before she could even properly recognize what the dozens of glowing yellow lights in the darkness ahead of them could be, her teammate had turned and bolted, dragging her along by the arm. Bullets flew after them as they retreated. She heard Scout yelp in pain and stumble, and the scuffle and subdued swearing as someone else stopped to help him up. They rounded one more hallway.

A single flashing red light greeted them. Dead end. "Ah, wonderful," Medic said dryly. "Now we may all die like rats." No. No, no, no. Looking behind her, Pyro could see the gleam of advancing yellow lights. On instinct she drew her axe. Then she hesitated, looked back at the door, and then lunged forward to grab Heavy's enormous arm. "Hey!" The giant looked down at her sharply. She held up the axe. "Break down the door!"

Heavy was astonishingly fast when not burdened down with his minigun. The axe had been taken from her before Pyro could so much as blink, and now she was holding the shotgun. She jumped backwards as Heavy braced himself in front of the door. She could not see anything past his bulk, but the sound of splintering wood was loud over the approaching robots. Not ten seconds later light burst through behind them, silhouetting Heavy. He reached in through the hole, found the handle, and threw the door open. "Come on!"

They scrambled inside, the door slamming behind them. It was another office. Soldier and Demoman overturned the only desk inside at once and pushed it in front of the door, covering the hole. Breathing hard, Pyro looked around.

The scene was by now familiar. Barren walls, a few uncomfortable-looking chairs, thin carpet. A noticeboard on the wall covered in things she couldn't read and probably weren't important anyway. Her team looked tense and nervous and tired, wound-up. Scout was heavily leaning on Sniper, blood running down his calf. Medic was clutching a growing red spot on his arm, peering out the window. "Well, my friends," he said, turning, "we are surrounded."

"So what—what d'we do?" Scout said.

"Wait for death, I suppose. Unless you have a better idea."

The motor-hum had risen to a scream. The machines were banging on the door.

"Well," Demoman said, slow and with gravity, "then let me say—"

He was interrupted by the howl of gunfire outside the door–not right outside it, but further away. Instantly the banging ceased. The BLU team stared among themselves. Was it another trap? No one wanted to open the door.

For nearly five minutes they waited, listening. The gunfire was joined by floor-shaking booms and what Pyro would have sworn to be yelling. Maybe Spy really had gone for help.

Then, with one final crash of something huge and metal, far away, the noise stopped. For a minute, silence. Everyone in the room jumped when there came a knock at the door. "Pyro," Heavy said quietly, looking from her to the fire extinguisher she'd forgotten she was still holding. Dammit. She nodded, and got it at the ready as Heavy prepared to move the desk.

The knock came again.

"They can disguise themselves, remember," Sniper called to her, and Heavy dragged the desk aside.

Nothing could be seen through the hole in the door, and Pyro did not dare to look closer. She heard footsteps, but no motors—but then, she hadn't heard any motors in the basement, either. Grimacing, she pulled it open, and stepped into the dark hallway.

There were shapes awaiting her. Pyro froze in the threshold, staring them down. Blinkered by her mask, she did not notice the one to her immediate left until it cleared its throat. With a flinch and a snarl, she whirled on it, hauling back on the extinguisher's trigger.

She got an explosive wheeze and a spurt of white powder, and the extinguisher did no more. It had been at close enough range to make her target stagger back and start hacking and coughing, though. She threw the can at it, missed, and was about to shout for them to run when something caught her by the collar. "Wait," Heavy said. "Look."

Pyro looked, struggling to see in the darkness. The thing she had sent sputtering was leaned up against the wall, coughing into his sleeve and, Pyro thought, trying to glare at her. "I appreciate—hhckk—your vigilance," said Spy, "but I am not a robot."

Oh, thank God. Pyro let herself relax, only to immediately tense up again when she remembered the other shadowy figures. One of them stepped forward.

"Hello, BLU team," Miss Pauling said. ("Wait, izzat—? Leggo, I can stand, awright," Pyro could hear Scout start up back in the room.) She stopped, lowering the heavy-looking black pistols she held, and looked them over as one by one they all approached the door. She grinned, a little too much for the situation, maybe. "You guys kind of look like you're in a tight spot."

"Jus' a bit," Demoman said, edging past Pyro. "Take all those robots out by your lonesome, lass?"

"No, I had help. From your new teammates, actually," Miss Pauling said, glancing behind her. Sure enough, as her eyes adjusted Pyro could count eight of the dark shapes, familiar silhouettes now that she knew what she was looking at. One was missing—their scout, she thought. The RED team was on high alert, bristling with weapons. "But we can talk about that later. There's still at least a hundred of those … things swarming in the stairwell and I'd like to get out of here alive, I think—"

An ear splitting crash boomed over her. "And that was the barricade," Miss Pauling said with a grimace. "Okay! Everyone grab a weapon, RED has the extras. This isn't really how I had planned your first merged team meeting, but I guess we'll just have to roll with it. Let's go."

* * *

><p>"And then, I mean, we just fought our way out," Pyro finished, shrugging. "It was a lot easier with shotguns, and a whole bunch of us."<p>

"And the building blew up at the end," Red added. "I'm still not sure how that happened."

"Man!" Clarence said, punching his fist. "Red told me some but damn, I'm sorry I missed that."

Red rolled their eyes, nudging Clarence in the gut. "Rein it in, Scout. You'll have plenty of opportunities soon enough."

The pair of REDs took their leave of her pretty soon after that, saying they still had a few more places to scope out as sleeping spots. Just as well. Pyro was desperately exhausted.

She made for the room she was sharing with Sniper and Soldier, by some miracle not encountering any of her other teammates before she made it there. She darted in, shut the door behind her, and for a few seconds stood with her head pressed against the frame, trying to clear her mind.

Then: "Hey there, Pyro."

She managed not to jump. Turning, she found Sniper. He'd unfurled his bedroll in the patch of sunlight that shone dimly in through the room's lone window, and lay sprawled on it with his back to her. How he'd known it was her, she wasn't sure—except that the only other person who would've come it would have been Soldier, and you could feel the air get a little bit more patriotic every time he walked into the room. "Hey," she said, slouching back against the door. "What's up?"

"Mmm, killing time, I figure. Miss Pauling said there oughtn't be any clankers running 'round 'til tomorrow."

"Oh," Pyro said. "Well, good. I'm not really looking forward to it after last time."

"Eh, they caught us by surprise then. Wasn't any of us expecting robots. That other Pyro's flamethrower made damn short work of them, I was surprised. You ought to have an advantage there at least."

"I guess it fried the circuits or something," Pyro said, shrugging. She tilted her head to the side a bit, trying to catch a better view over Sniper's shoulder. He had something in his hands. "What's that?"

"Hm? This?" He finally rolled over onto his back, glancing at her, and waved it in the air. It looked like a little plastic box, with a single round lens and a slot in the front. "I'll show ya. Hold still."

"Why?"

She was answered with a burst of light, harsh and surprising enough that it made her grimace and shield her eyes. When she could see again, Sniper had dropped the box onto his chest and was waving a small white thing back and forth in the air. He gestured her over and she complied, dropping down to sit cross-legged next to him. "S'a camera," Sniper said, passing the box to her. "Instant camera, me old one from when I was a kid. Not too sure how it got into the bag, but I'd bet me mum snuck it in on my last visit. She'll do that sometimes."

A camera. It did look like one upon closer examination, she supposed, even if it did look a hell of a lot more advanced than any other she'd ever seen. But that happened a lot with Sniper. He'd show up with machines that might as well have been magic for all she could have explained how they worked. On the last mission he'd brought a minuscule black rectangle along and called it a phone. That was around the time she'd decided she'd never understand how Australia worked. "Cool," she said, turning it over in her hands. She glanced up at the white thing Sniper still held. "So then what's that?"

"Here," Sniper said, handing it to her. It turned out to be not only a white thing, but a white rectangle with a smaller, dark square inside, and inside the dark square vague, washed-out shapes were slowly forming. "It's not quite done yet, but that's the picture I just took of you. Instant camera," he said again, smirking a little at her raised eyebrows.

Sure enough, as Pyro squinted she could make out what must have been her own silhouette—the golden emblems on her shoulders stood out before anything else, and her hair and skin faded in last. The whole thing had a warm cast to it. It was a hell of an improvement over the photos in her folder, to say the least. "Oh—oh, instant, I get it," she said.

"Keep that one," Sniper said. "I got more film in here than I know what to do with. Cripes. It must've been me mum stowed it in here."

"Sure," she said, still studying it. "I don't have any photos of myself. Thanks."

He waved her off, and she retreated to her bedroll, still examining the picture. Mirrors were one thing, and they had lied to her before. She wondered if photos might be different.


	7. 5: OWENS RESIDENCE

**THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER**

As a rule, getting told off was something Scout tried to avoid. Usually he was pretty sure he wasn't in the wrong to start with.

But then again, most of the time he wasn't getting told off by Miss Pauling. He'd get told off by Miss Pauling all day, really, if he could. She did that really outrageously cute thing with her lips when she was scolding you. And she was doing it now, a little bit, as she and Scout walked down the halls from the cafeteria. "I don't have to talk to you about Pyro again, doI?"

"'Course not," Scout said, sticking his hands in his pockets as he carefully matched Miss Pauling's strides. "She stays outta my way, we don't got any problems."

"What were you talking about in the cafeteria?"

"Heck, I dunno. She comes up to me, starts talkin' at me like she's tryin' to do some told-ya-so thing, somethin' about Sawmill. I dunno."

"Alright," Miss Pauling said, after a moment's deliberation. "Keep it that way. I've already got enough of a headache to deal with about merging the teams. I'd rather not have to deal with any more in-fighting than I already have to."

"Hey, anythin' for you."

That got her to glance up at him, scarcely even moving her head to do so. A grin sprang unbidden to Scout's face, and her mouth quirked, just a little. "Anyway, so," she said eventually, "I've got good news for you. A lot of the old rules—like the name thing—they got dropped when Mr. Hale rehired all of you. I dug around a little and I found out that the one about no phone calls while on base was one of them."

Phone calls. The words drifted aimlessly through Scout's head for a few seconds before he completely understood them, but when he did he nearly tripped over his own feet. "Really?" he asked, and heck, he could feel his expression brightening, rising hope shoving leftover irritation at Pyro far into the back of his mind. "So––so I can call home now? Seriously?"

"Yes," Miss Pauling said, and there was a note of amusement in her voice. "So you can, you know, you can stop petitioning me for the right every other week. I couldn't have ever swayed that for you anyway. I told you that."

"Aw, didn't ever figure you really could. Lots'a times it was just an excuse to talk t'you anyway, ain't 'professional' flirtin' with the boss otherwise."

Miss Pauling snorted. "No, it's not. Um. And you always do it in front of the team. You know I'm going to shoot you down around _them_ every time," she said, not unkindly. "Not always nicely, either."

"Hey, I get excited!" he said, nudging her shoulder, teasing. "I didn't know you was gonna be stickin' around none, you can't gotta be on business all the time, right? What're you doin' tonight?"

"Oh, now I have more work than ever," she sighed. "There wasn't ever a real threat before. These machines are _dangerous_, Scout, they could destroy … well. They're dangerous, is all you need to know. We're lucky they're only focusing on Mann Co. and not, I don't know, world domination or—or something." She shook herself, brushing a strand of hair out from behind her glasses. "But. Anyway. The phone. I would have announced it at the meeting, but I thought I'd let you have the first shot. Since you've been asking for about three years, I mean. It's in here."

She had taken them to a small office room tucked into the end of a hall, near the factory's front entrance. The narrow brown door swung open silently as she led him inside a tiny green room, and wonder of wonders, there on the wooden desk sat a little black rotary telephone. It was plugged in and everything. "Aw, geez," Scout started, picking up the handset a little reverently. "Miss Pauling, I—this, this's real great. You're the best." He couldn't have wiped the grin off his face if he'd tried, and Miss Pauling looked pleased with herself. "My ma was real worried when I said I didn't know when I'd be back this time, ain't never got a mission brief without a, at least a stab at how long it'd be. Sheesh. Thanks. Really."

"You're welcome," she said, smiling back, "It'll still come out of your paycheck, being long-distance and all. But I didn't think you'd mind."

"Heck no I don't."

"Right. So, same NDA rules like always. Try not to wear the mouthpiece out."

"Hey, no promises," Scout said lightly as she stepped out from the room and shut the door behind her.

Damn. First he'd get to be around Miss Pauling for the foreseeable future, and now he got to call back home whenever he liked. Pyro aside, it was turning out to be a good day.

Less than a minute later he had it ringing. Scout leaned back against the desk, waiting. One, two, three. It never got past five unless the house was empty. On the fourth, there was a click, and then a cleared throat. "Owens residence," said a hoarse, tinny voice.

"'Owens residence', since when are you answerin' the phone sayin' '_Owens residence_'? Gettin' all fancy, puttin' on airs, sheesh?"

A pause. "Who's this?"

"Oh fer—Roger, it's _me_, who else'd be callin' and givin' you shit?"

There was another beat, and then a burst of laughter echoed over the line. "Hell, shorty, you done already? Or did they finally fire you? I thought you weren't allowed to call on account'a your top-secret military crap."

"Yeah, well, I talked some sense into 'em," Scout said. "Man, you sound about a million years old on the phone. I figured Sidney'd be the one picking up."

"Nah, he's sleeping."

"Lazy ass."

"Yeah, you'd be tired too if you did night shifts on the docks, y'little shit," Roger said, voice warm. "So you really gonna be callin' us now? You didn't sneak off to a pay phone or nothing?"

"I told you, talked some sense into 'em. And I got that girl at the office on my side, Miss P, you remember her. She helped me out."

"A'course I do, given you don't shut your lousy mouth about her _ever_. If you're gonna launch into another speech about her I'm hangin' up right now."

Scout snorted. "Relax. So how's things? I guess it's only been, what, two weeks, but still."

"Nothin', really," Roger said. "Ma's out shopping. I got the day off, and Sidney's got work later. Henry's here, came visitin', he's out with Ma. Nothin' new, you shoulda waited on calling if you wanted new."

"I'm missin' Henry? Shoot. I told that bastard I'd beat his ass at darts next time he came by."

"He's gonna be here another week or so, I figure. You comin' back any time soon?"

"No. Nah. Don't think so," Scout said, dropping down to sit back against the desk. "So just you four, huh? I thought Atticus and Liam and them were coming by soon."

"J, they've been sayin' that for months." Scout grimaced; his brother sighed. "I dunno, man. Maybe I'll give 'em a call later and see if I can't drag 'em back home next you get back, but they're busy too."

"Yeah, yeah, everyone's real busy," Scout muttered. "Man, so just you? Wastin' my money payin' to talk to Roger. Damn."

"I'll kick your ass the second you pull back into Boston. Oh—wait, y'know, there was somethin'. Freakin' weird." On the other end of the line, Roger paused. Hesitated, even. "I mean I don't know for sure what the deal is since I ain't seen it, but Ma thinks she's bein' followed."

Silence.

"Followed?"

"Yeah," Roger said, "official-lookin' guys, I guess. Suits. She—"

"Whaddya mean _followed_, who's followin' Ma? Do I gotta come back? 'Cuz I'll come back, I don't care 'bout my damn contract that much—"

"Cool it, man, shit." The note of annoyance in Roger's voice was palpable, and that just raised Scout's hackles higher. "You'd probably just jump the wrong son of a bitch anyway, you're so high-strung."

"I ain't frickin'—"

"Look, cool it, man. It ain't like me _and_ Sid _and_ Henry can't take care of a couple'a jokers if it comes down to it. Ma don't even seem too worried. I wouldn't even've known except I heard her talkin' to the neighbor lady about it."

There was a prickly, dangerous kind of feeling darting across Scout's skin, standing the hair on the back of his neck and arms straight up. It was familiar and it made him jumpy, and it usually kicked in about five seconds before someone around him got stabbed in the back. "Yeah, well," Scout said, trying to gather himself together again. "Well you keep a damn sharp eye on her."

"You don't gotta tell me that, kid."

"You ain't even four years older than me, don't call me kid."

"Uh-huh," Roger said. Scout could practically hear him rolling his eyes. "Everything'll be fine. Okay? I know you, you're gonna be freakin' out now, I shouldn't'a told you even. Me and Sid can take care of her."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Good. Listen, you call back later, you talk to Ma, alright? She'll be sorry she missed you. And don't go quizzing her about this followin' crap, I shouldn't'a told you."

"I won't, sheesh. And yeah. I'll call back later. Tell Ma I love her."

"Sure. Cool. Glad you got a phone now, J. Seeya."

"Bye."

Click, went the line. Scout lowered the handset from his ear and looked down at it for longer than he maybe needed to.

The hair on the back of his neck hadn't gone down at all.

* * *

><p>Just <em>once<em> he'd like to actually catch the goddamn RED spy by surprise. Just _once_. Once was all he would need! Just one time to give the bastard a nice mouthful of buckshot. Or a bat to the face. Anything, really, there weren't a lot of things Scout couldn't do substantial damage with if he tried.

But as it was, by the time he tracked the stupid fancy jackass down—Spy was outside, smoking those imported cigarettes he went through like candy—by the time Scout got someone to tell him where they'd last seen him, the spy was leaning one hand against the wall and staring straight at him. Like he'd been expecting him.

Dickhead.

"Hey," Scout called as he loped out of the factory doors. "Hey, yo, stupid-lookin'."

The spy did not so much as raise an eyebrow. Instead he took a slow, careful drag off his cigarette, looked around, and said with exaggerated curiosity, "Who?"

"Shut up, God, look, I don't give a crap about how clever you think you are," Scout said, coming to a halt just in front of him. The spy regarded him with a flat, bored expression. It occurred to Scout, abruptly and unpleasantly, that he had no idea what he'd planned to say. "I know you're still hangin' around my mother," he started.

That got a reaction. The spy quirked one eyebrow this time, lazily, and the smallest smile tugged at his face. "Ah, yes. We had a delightful … engagement rather recently. Enchanting woman."

"I don't wanna hear it," Scout snapped. "Look. I hate your friggin' stupid guts but you make her happy. I don't know _how,_ but you do, so I keep my damn mouth shut about it—"

"Do you? I hadn't noticed."

"—an' I always figured, fine, whatever, so long as we keep all this gravel wars, shootin' each other's faces in, crazy respawn immortality shit on the field where it belongs, fine, she don't know, she's better off. But y'know what I just found out, I just got offa the phone with my brother and he's sayin' she's sayin' there's some guys followin' her around now." He'd been leaning in further and further as he spoke, not entirely aware of it. By the time he'd stopped to take a breath he was up about as close to the spy as he ever cared to get. He could have counted the bastard's teeth. "So," he picked up again, "there ain't no way you don't know somethin' about that."

And the spy, again, seemed completely unaffected. He studied Scout a moment, rolling his cigarette between his fingers, then tilted his head back and sighed. "Unbelievable."

That wasn't the answer Scout had been expecting. He pulled away, caught off-guard. "Unbeli—listen, ugly, I ain't playin' your 'ooh I'm so smart' games, I ain't—"

"You 'ain't' a lot of things, Jeremiah," the spy said, sounding bored. Scout's jaw snapped shut as he stared at him, not expecting to be addressed by his name. But of course the spy knew it, of course he did, hanging around Scout's mother all the time. Prick. "Among these things is observant. Otherwise, you might have noticed that those same men have been tailing her since February."

Well. That shut Scout up. It took him a few seconds to catch up with the spy's meaning, and when he finally did the spy had already turned and begun wandering away. "H—hey," Scout barked, trotting after. "What the heck does that mean, since _February_, what d'you know about 'em?—hey, asshole, I'm _talkin'_ to you—"

The spy stopped, stiff-backed. "You are talking _at_ me," he said. "I realize your ability to be forward-thinking ends with how far you can hit a baseball, but try and be logical. If there were strangers bearing ill will toward your mother, and _I_ knew of them—" Here he rounded on Scout, staring down at him coolly. "—do you _honestly_ believe they would still be breathing?"

Scout had pulled up short when the spy turned to him, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep his snarl in check. "Well—well then frickin' tell me what's goin' on," he said at last. "She's my ma, I think I got about as much of a right as anybody to know what's goin' on."

"That may be so," said the spy. "but: no. Suffice it to say they are nothing you nor the rest of your family need concern yourselves with."

"What, _no_, what the hell I am not gonna—"

"Good God, boy, don't you have anything else to be doing? We are fighting the most dangerous enemy of our lives tomorrow." The spy made an impatient gesture toward the horizon.

"Whatever," Scout said, folding his arms over his chest. "They ain't such tough shit, I ain't scared of them."

"Ah, yes, because you and your stunted little team certainly were not ambushed and trapped by them."

"…Fuck off. I ain't scared, an' it don't even matter, this ain't about robots."

In answer the spy gave a long and drawn-out sigh; he tilted his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Incorrect. But then I cannot hope to expect such clarity out of you, can I? Nor fear, you are correct. It is the nature of the scout to know no fear, is it not, regardless of how real the danger might actually be." He shook out his wrist, and then as a kind of afterthought, reached out and pulled Scout's hat down over his eyes.

"Hey!"

"That is why you die so often, you see. You have no regard for the long-term consequences of things."

Scout ripped his hat back up off his head, fuming, but the spy had vanished.


End file.
